Flash Fiction Friday: The Mustache Growing Competition

This is so not fair! Why isn’t Principal Tug in his office? Principal offices are for principals, not guys who used to be my arch-nemesis before I met Rifkin.

“What are you even doing here, Burt Reynolds? You’re not my arch-nemesis anymore…and this is his office, so you should probably leave.”

Burt Reynolds gets out of the principal’s chair and traces the tip of his thumb across his mustache (which looks really dumb by the way). “Well, your principal called me on this here telephone. And he says, ‘Tiddlydoo, Burt Reynolds. I’ve got myself a problem. Can you pop on down to the school to give a no-good son of a bitch the beating he’s been beggin’ for ever since his momma sneezed him outta her cooch?’ So I says, ‘Ten four, good buddy,’ and beat my fastest time getting here. And then you walk through the door and I says to myself, ‘Well, if it ain’t my arch-nemesis, Justin Lucas!’ Ha ha ha!”

“You’re not my arch-nemesis anymore. You lost that honor when Principal Tug tried to get me to pull down my pants.”

“That really hurts my feelings,” Burt Reynolds says, crying like the biggest fake crier in the history of crying.

“I didn’t think it was possible for your acting to get any worse,” I say, and he stops pretending to be upset and starts being upset for realz. “So where’s Principal Tug?” I ask.

“ATTENTION STUDENTS,” blares out of the loudspeaker of doom.

Aaaaaaah! Not again!

I stick my fingers in my ears to hold back the blood.

“This is Principal Tug with another important announcement: You may have noticed that I’m not in my office. This is because I’m ALL-POWERFUL and have the ability to do my announcements from ANYWHERE in the school. Don’t bother to look for me because you shall NEVER find me. In fact, the entire planet is hearing this. Lungville has the finest loudspeaker technologies in the world. No other sovereign state can compete. And we also have the best assassins. Burt, it’s time for you to nip our country’s problem in the bud.”

Burt Reynolds rolls up his sleeves. “My pleasure, Principal Tug.” Then he tries to psych me out with his ex-arch-nemesis eyes and says, “Your ‘stache is lookin’ purty good today, hoss. Last time I saw it, it couldn’t compete against the fuzz on the side of a peach, but now it’s almost as long as one of my mama’s brussel sprouts. It’s pretty luscious for an eight year old.”

I put up my dukes. “I’m almost eighteen, stupid, and my marvelous mustache is more marvelous than Marv the Marvelous Magician…and that guy is pretty marvelous. And it’s like a trazillion times more marvelous than yours, so why don’t you shut up?”

“Give your fists a rest, son. Let’s do this like men. How about a friendly mustache growing competition?”

“That makes no sense whatsoever,” I say. “How can we grow mustaches when we already have them?”

“Simple as peach pie,” Burt Reynolds says, then he shaves off his mustache with a chainsaw.

“You’ve lost your brain! Mustaches are sacred.”

“Your turn,” he says, passing me the chainsaw.

I smash it on the floor. “I’m not shaving my mustache with a chainsaw. That’s the most retarded thing ever. By the way, your look weird as hell without a mustache.”

“Alright,” he says, “be right back.” He walks behind the principal’s desk, opens a drawer, and plops a Bic razor, shaving cream, a hand mirror, and a mug of water down onto the desk.

“Dude, I’m not shaving my ‘stache. You win the dumbass dork competition. I lost by disqualification, because I’m not a dumbass dork.”

“Huh. Always thought you were the coolest kid on the planet. Guess not.”

“Give me that razor, you motherfucker!”

He hands it to me, and I shave my mustache off. I do it perfectly since I’m great at everything that I do.

(A marvelous mustache is a state of mind. It doesn’t matter if it’s been shaved out of existence. A razor is powerless against greatness.)

“My marvelous mustache will grow back in six minutes flat,” I say.

“Mine will be larger than life and humpin’ your mama in three,” Burt Reynolds says.

We wait in silence for our mustaches to grow while making war faces at each other. After three minutes, Burt Reynold’s mustache is back. Like he never shaved it in the first place.

I feel my upper lip and it’s completely bare.

Stupid! How could I be so stupid? It took me seven years to grow my marvelous mustache. Why did I think I stood a chance against the Mustache King of the South?

Burt Reynolds hands me a samurai sword. “You know what to do.”

“No, I don’t know what to do.”

“Do the honorable thing and commit seppuku.”

“I have no idea whatsoever what you’re talking about.”

“Disembowel yourself with this here sword and save yourself from a lifetime of humiliation.”

“Disembowel?”

Burt Reynolds makes a frustrated face. “Just stick it in your belly and give it a nice wiggle.”

“Uh…okay,” I say, then I take a swing at his throat.

Blood spurts out of his neck, and he gives me a big smile. “You got me, Smokey.” Then his corpse falls onto the principal’s desk, knocking over a bronze eagle, and some sort of elevator-thing opens in the wall.

“PAY NO ATTENTION TO MY PERSONAL ELEVATOR.”

“Aaaaaaah!” I say and drop the sword.

“It just goes to my private bathroom, which I NEVER clean. You REALLY don’t want to go in there. I just had an extremely SMELLY bowel movement. WOOOO! I can smell it from my secret bunker even though it’s NOWHERE near my private bathroom. If you want to go to my secret bunker, you’ll to need to take a different secret elevator, which you will NEVER find because it’s so secret. Dear God, I think my stench is knocking me unconscious. Yes, I’m definitely unconscious. By the way, I talk in my sleep, and when I’m unconscious.”